Harold Ross Roberts, M.D: inspirational mentor, consummate physician, superb scientist (1930–2017)

Harold Ross Roberts was known throughout the world, respected in the highest halls of research, and led international organizations, but he never lost the sense of scientific wonder and the connection to people that he learned growing up in rural Four Oaks, a town of about 1000 people in central North Carolina. That ability to connect with people characterized the rest of his life and enabled him to interact with trainees, patients, and colleagues in truly special ways. He was an inspirational mentor and leader, a consummate physician, and a superb scientist. He passed away at age 87 (just a few months after his wife, Mari) in the presence of his two sons on 9 September 2017. Roberts was the first of his family to go to college and the first to go into medicine (Fig. 1). He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1952 and Alpha Omega Alpha from the UNC School of Medicine in 1955. During medical school, a two-year Student Fellowship with new Chair of Pathology, Kenneth Brinkhous, MD, started him on the road to a career in the growing field of blood coagulation and began an association with Brinkhous that would last nearly half a century. After an internal medicine internship at Vanderbilt University, he spent two years at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark as a Fulbright Scholar in Experimental Pathology in the laboratory of Tage Astrup. There, he met the love of his life, Marilyn (Mari) Claassen from Iowa, who was working in the Astrup lab. Over his career, he and Mari would return to Denmark twice for sabbaticals, one at the University of Aarhus in the laboratory of Stefan Magnusson and one at Novo Nordisk with Ulla Hedner, where he discovered the b isoform of tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI). The next five years saw him return to Vanderbilt for Residency, back to Chapel Hill for a Fellowship in Pathology, back to Vanderbilt for a Fellowship in Hematology, and back to Chapel Hill for a Fellowship in Neurology and further research training in Pathology. In 1964, he joined the faculty at UNC as Assistant Professor of Pathology and Medicine, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1967, and in 1968, at the age of 38, became Chief of the Division of Hematology-Oncology. He was promoted to Professor in 1970 and named Sarah Graham Kenan Professor, the highest regarded professorship at UNC, of Medicine and Pathology, in 1986. From 1977 to 1980, he was the founding Director of the Comprehensive Hemophilia Diagnostic and Treatment Center, which now bears his name and which was one of the pioneering Centers for Comprehensive Care of any disease (Fig. 2). From 1978 to 1998, he was founding Director of the Center for Thrombosis and Hemostasis at UNC. Over the span of his career, he would publish 345 articles and edit 12 books. He was continuously funded by the NIH for 42 years, was principal investigator for 15 years of a Program Project Grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and was one of four scientists in the US, along with Ralph Nachman at Cornell, Robert Colman at Temple and Philip Majerus at Washington University, to receive funding for the prestigious Specialized Centers of Research (SCOR) in Thrombosis. He was Chair of the Hematology Study Section at NIH an unprecedented three times and those that served with him will remember the efficiency with which he ran those meetings. He also chaired the Program Project Grant Review Committee, served on and chaired the Advisory Board of the Division of Blood Diseases and Resources (DBDR), and served on the Advisory Board and Board of External Advisors of the NHLBI. His insight and comprehensive knowledge of the world of thrombosis and hemostasis was greatly valued by NHLBI. That same insight and knowledge led him to chair the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of the National Hemophilia Foundation, chair the Hemostasis Gordon Research Conference, and serve a term as Councilor for the American Society of Hematology. For more than 40 years, Roberts was a driving force in the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH). He joined the organization in 1966, when it was This article is being published concurrently in the January 2018 issue (Vol. 2, No. 1) of Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis.